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Theranos Secretly Bought Outside Lab Gear, Ran Fake Tests: Court Filings

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Re: Theranos Secretly Bought Outside Lab Gear, Ran Fake Tests: Court Filings

#151

Post by [deleted] »

lettergram wrote: post #72
stanfordkid wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to Stanford (hence the screen name) ... Stanford students are generally sheep that know one thing for certain: That they are smart enough to get into Stanford and that they now have pretty much zero excuse to not be successful. They assume that other things (vision, relentless lifelong obsession) are means to ends. It is a fertile breeding ground for what Trungpa Rinpoche most accurately describes a "Spiritual…

I don't really know why this has to link back to Stanford.

[deleted]

Re: Theranos Secretly Bought Outside Lab Gear, Ran Fake Tests: Court Filings

#152

Post by aaron695 »

SophosQ wrote: post #117
bspn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic: he's 95 years old?! I don't care how well connected he is, who thought it would be a good idea to have a nonagenarian on the board of a (supposedly) cutting edge health-tech company?!

Could you state reasons to support your assertion that a nonagenarian shouldn't be on the board of an innovative tech. Company ?

95 years old do not have their full faculities.

Even if they were part if a very very small minority that did (if any exist), it would be hard to test for legally I'd imagine.

We judge people by their pasts, in extreme old age this is no longer applicable.

I do think it's a little sad the obvious has to be pointed out.

If not now, in the future you will have to deal with people getting old, hard truths will have to be dealt with at some point.

Re: Theranos Secretly Bought Outside Lab Gear, Ran Fake Tests: Court Filings

#153

Post by DonHopkins »

Buge wrote: post #134
fikgm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stanford sells rich parents membership in a club for their children. Their billions is a pile of bribes. Poor smarter children go without.

Stanford (like most top private schools) offers very generous financial aid. Very low tuition for students whose families make https://news.stanford.edu/2015/03/27/new-admits-finaid-03271... Of course poor students are less likely to get accepted because of less access to private tutors and other support.

And the rich students who get in because of their rich parents don't have to go through the same rigorous smartness and motivational filters that poor students do.

I'm willing to bet the poor students on financial aid aren't such entitled misogynistic douchebags as the rich ones [1] who go on to found companies that are "only for rich people".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Spiegel

Re: Theranos Secretly Bought Outside Lab Gear, Ran Fake Tests: Court Filings

#154

Post by verulito »

epmaybe wrote: post #119
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree, not sure why they've killed your karma. Between taking a pay cheque and whistle blowing, the large majority of people will always not rock the boat and take the money.

I think you're referring to the people working for theranos itself. However, investors generally try and do their due diligence before investing. Did none of the investors seek an expert to verify the claims made by Theranos prior to investing?

I recall reading on Quora that the CEO used family connections to land her initial funding from some reputable investors. They may have glossed over the due diligence. The rest just piggybacked on the reputation of the early investors. There may have been some or many which did that diligence but since they didn't speak up, we'll never know.

Re: Theranos Secretly Bought Outside Lab Gear, Ran Fake Tests: Court Filings

#155

Post by verulito »

stanfordkid wrote: post #68
adventured wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a frequent fine line in tech. To get a contract, Bob Noyce claimed for a buyer that Fairchild could produce & deliver a new type of transistor, in a large quantity, without having any production capability for it yet, as it had never been built. Excite bid on getting a place on Netscape's browser, before having the money to actually pay for it (they figured they'd get it afterward): http://bnoopy.typepad.com/bno…

I went to Stanford (hence the screen name) ... Stanford students are generally sheep that know one thing for certain: That they are smart enough to get into Stanford and that they now have pretty much zero excuse to not be successful. They assume that other things (vision, relentless lifelong obsession) are means to ends. It is a fertile breeding ground for what Trungpa Rinpoche most accurately describes a "Spiritual…

We should also remember that she graduated like 15 years ago, about the same time I did. The world was VERY different back then. Her style of management reflects the generation she was created from. Unlike her peers, she was unlucky enough to have had access to enough funding to last this long. As a result, the damage done is larger than was typical even back then but also ending at a time when it would stand out. Companies like Theranos collapsed all the time in SV in the late 90s and no one thought anything of it as a result. It's not an excuse but from the looks of it, her hole was too deep by the time trends change to do a course correction.

Let's also not forget that she pursued a vision that was severely flawed, no different than many college students today even. She made a lot of mistakes that many of her peers made at the same age. She's just really unlucky at this point.

Re: Theranos Secretly Bought Outside Lab Gear, Ran Fake Tests: Court Filings

#156

Post by saturated_world »

Buge wrote: post #134
fikgm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stanford sells rich parents membership in a club for their children. Their billions is a pile of bribes. Poor smarter children go without.

Stanford (like most top private schools) offers very generous financial aid. Very low tuition for students whose families make https://news.stanford.edu/2015/03/27/new-admits-finaid-03271... Of course poor students are less likely to get accepted because of less access to private tutors and other support.

In theory, that is great. In practice, it does little to level the playing field.

Many capable high school students are not even aware that schools like Stanford exist, and cannot even begin to conceive what acceptance into such a radically different world would even mean. I surely didn't. It is also possible that those students who are aware, and do aspire to receive this aid, have family members who actively sabotage their efforts.

Re: Theranos Secretly Bought Outside Lab Gear, Ran Fake Tests: Court Filings

#157

Post by verulito »

rhino369 wrote: post #49
adventured wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a frequent fine line in tech. To get a contract, Bob Noyce claimed for a buyer that Fairchild could produce & deliver a new type of transistor, in a large quantity, without having any production capability for it yet, as it had never been built. Excite bid on getting a place on Netscape's browser, before having the money to actually pay for it (they figured they'd get it afterward): http://bnoopy.typepad.com/bno…

Promising to do something you aren't entirely sure you can do or haven't done yet, isn't fraud unless you lie about having done it before or being ready to go tomorrow or something. Arguably, it is not even fraud when Theranos took samples and used a different method of testing (as long as the testing was just as accurate). Therano's fraud was then telling investors and potential partners/clients that it had been tes…

Actually, it turns out that they also fabricated data on their test (Herpes I think) and they ended up having to send out letters to tens of thousands of customers who got false positives. They must be pissed... think of all the damage those have caused.

Re: Theranos Secretly Bought Outside Lab Gear, Ran Fake Tests: Court Filings

#158

Post by [deleted] »

rhino369 wrote: post #49
adventured wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a frequent fine line in tech. To get a contract, Bob Noyce claimed for a buyer that Fairchild could produce & deliver a new type of transistor, in a large quantity, without having any production capability for it yet, as it had never been built. Excite bid on getting a place on Netscape's browser, before having the money to actually pay for it (they figured they'd get it afterward): http://bnoopy.typepad.com/bno…

Promising to do something you aren't entirely sure you can do or haven't done yet, isn't fraud unless you lie about having done it before or being ready to go tomorrow or something. Arguably, it is not even fraud when Theranos took samples and used a different method of testing (as long as the testing was just as accurate). Therano's fraud was then telling investors and potential partners/clients that it had been tes…

[deleted]

Re: Theranos Secretly Bought Outside Lab Gear, Ran Fake Tests: Court Filings

#160

Post by manigandham »

epmaybe wrote: post #119
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree, not sure why they've killed your karma. Between taking a pay cheque and whistle blowing, the large majority of people will always not rock the boat and take the money.

I think you're referring to the people working for theranos itself. However, investors generally try and do their due diligence before investing. Did none of the investors seek an expert to verify the claims made by Theranos prior to investing?

> investors generally try and do their due diligence before investing

They don't, especially in SV. Several of them have written about this. Beyond some cursory checks, they don't do much since it's often too expensive and time consuming to investigate every possible deal. A strong team with good connections and referrals is usually enough.

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